


Boredom and Its Consequences

by certain_as_the_sun



Series: How to Train Your God of Mischief [6]
Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Loki is Toothless, The Avengers (2012) Never Happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-05 01:46:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6684340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/certain_as_the_sun/pseuds/certain_as_the_sun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Loki is bored.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Boredom and Its Consequences

**Author's Note:**

> This is the story I meant to write when I ended up writing _Dead Leaves and Fleeting Skies_. When I was trying to decide what next to write in this AU, I thought, "night can't be the only time Loki stops being a dragon", which led to "what does he do when Hiccup isn't around?", and _that_ lead to "I bet he plays tricks on poor, unsuspecting Berkians". This story is based around that idea :)
> 
> And yes, most of the tools Gobber uses are probably anachronistic. Just put it down to the fact neither HTTYD or Thor are exactly historically accurate.

Loki was bored.

It would be difficult to find three words more likely to strike terror into the heart of any Asgardian (except, of course, "Loki was angry"). Nothing good ever happened when Loki was bored. The things that happened when Loki was bored had sent a few luckless courtiers quite literally screaming for the hills. The last time Loki was bored, Tyr went missing and a regiment of hardened Æsir warriors were left traumatised. Tyr was later found cowering behind a statue of Bor, muttering about a roasted boar that got up from its serving dish and danced a waltz across the table before the astonished eyes of the aforementioned regiment. No one was ever able to _prove_ it was Loki, but everyone _knew_ it was.

And now he was bored again. Not even the memory of the many pranks he'd played in Asgard offered him any amusement. There was only one recourse left to him: playing tricks on the inhabitants of Berk. And unlike Asgard, Berk didn't know to run for their lives when Loki was bored. They didn't even know he walked among them.

 

* * *

 

 

He put his plan into action one day when Hiccup was busy helping Gothi rescue a Terrible Terror that had gotten stuck in a rabbit hole. Gobber was his first victim. It wasn't because the God of Mischief harboured any great dislike for the blacksmith - Gobber was one of Hiccup's friends, and that fact alone made him one of the few humans who didn't offend Loki by existing. It was simply because he was close at hand. Loki slipped from his dragon form to his Æsir one - he found magic came easiest to this one, though he could generally use magic no matter what form he took - and hid in a gap between two sheets of metal. From there he could observe how his prank worked without being seen.

The prank he played was neither his most original nor his most complex. It was such a simple trick he would normally have believed it beneath him, but he needed to do _something_ to alleviate the crushing boredom, and it was as good a start as any. It was the same prank that had driven a good many Asgardian servants and warriors to distraction: moving various objects around the room when they weren't looking. He started with the tools Gobber left scattered on the ground while he was busy with the furnace.

The blacksmith reached for a file, and found himself holding a wrench instead. He stared at it blankly, as if he'd never seen it before and hadn't a clue where it could have come from. Then he shrugged, tossed it away and went in search of the file.

While Gobber was looking for the file, Loki telekinetically moved an anvil several inches to the right of its previous position. Then, just for good measure, he stacked a few other tools into a tower of sorts. The look on the human's face when he turned back to find a saw standing upright, with a hammer balancing on top of it and a pair of tongs on top of _it_ , was almost too much for Loki's self-control. In his efforts not to laugh he bit his tongue so hard he tasted blood. His concentration slipped, and the tower collapsed with a resounding clatter.

Gobber gaped at the scattered tools. Then he rubbed his eyes with his remaining hand and stared some more. Then he swore, loudly and inventively. Loki learned some words that even the palace servants, the usual targets for his pranks, had never used. After exhausting his extensive vocabulary, the human stumped away. Going by his disgruntled mutterings, he was on his way to the dining hall for a much-needed drink.

Loki took the form of a raven and flew away to a secluded part of the forest, where he dissolved into shrieks of laughter that greatly alarmed a good few small animals.

 

* * *

 

The God of Mischief did not think highly of Astrid. She returned the favour whole-heartedly. (It was truly amazing, how some people took offence at being threatened late at night in their own houses. Loki couldn't understand it at all.) Anyway, he didn't like Astrid and she didn't like him, and so she was his next victim. The prank he played on her was just as simple as his first one, but likely to cause more trouble. He put a spell on her. A _translation_ spell. A translation spell that ensured her every word was in an obscure dialect of Vanaheim that, to the Berkians, would sound like complete and utter gibberish, to be precise.

Sadly, he wasn't present for the chaos that ensued when it first took effect, since he went flying with Hiccup, but when they returned they found Astrid waiting for them. He could see at a glance that his prank had all the effect he could hope for. The girl's face was a most unflattering shade of red (the same shade as Thor's cape, in fact) and she gave the two of them the most terrifying glare she could manage. Loki wasn't alarmed in the slightest, but he gave her credit for the effort.

She started shouting at them as soon as they were within hearing range. Loki's Vanaheimish was rusty, and Hiccup's non-existent, so they didn't understand precisely what she was saying. That didn't mean they didn't understand what she _meant_. It was quite obvious from her tone of voice that she wanted the spell removed.

Instead of landing, they banked to the side and circled around. Hiccup leaned so far to the side of the saddle that Loki could see the look of mildly horrified bemusement on his face.

"Astrid..." The boy had some trouble finding something to say. "...Are you okay?"

They were promptly treated to a lesson in the sort of Vanaheimish rarely used in the presence of royalty.

Loki landed and gave Hiccup a Look that said clearly, "Get off". Hiccup dismounted, taking care to keep Loki between himself and Astrid. The God of Mischief rolled his eyes. Human men. They'd do things that would put them in danger of losing life or limb without flinching, they'd face wild animals without batting an eyelid, but the moment they met an angry women - or even an angry girl - their courage deserted them and they quivered in their boots.

He resumed his Æsir form. Astrid paused in her rant to stare at him in shock for a moment. Why was she surprised? he wondered. She'd seen him do it before.

She recovered and continued her rant.

"Be quiet," Loki ordered.

She fell silent and glared at him.

"You have no doubt noticed by now that you are under a spell. It will wear off at midnight tonight and nothing you can say will make me remove it sooner. Until then, I advise you keep your mouth shut and find some other way of communicating. Now go away."

She left, but not without giving him a look that promised vengeance.

Hiccup frowned disapprovingly at him. "What did she do to deserve you putting a spell on her?"

"Nothing. I was bored."

 

* * *

  
  
For a week after this, Berk was plagued by a series of strange incidents. All the mead in the village was replaced with water. Doors and windows mysteriously opened or closed. A woman watched in amazement as her clean laundry turned into a flock of sparrows and flew away. She later found them as clothes again, folded up and placed neatly on the roof.

Hiccup knew who was responsible, and he made sure to let Loki know he knew. And as the week went on and the incidents continued with no indication of stopping, he made increasingly desperate attempts to convince Loki to _stop this, NOW_!

 

* * *

  
  
Loki's _pièce de résistance_ required slightly more magic, but caused just as much frustration. He used magic to lift the tables and chairs in the dining hall and stick them to the ceiling. Then he waited, invisible to human eyes, for the villagers to arrive.

The first few Berkians to enter the hall stopped and stared around them.

"Where's the furniture?" someone asked.

The humans split up and wandered aimlessly around the room, as if they thought several long, heavy wooden tables and their accompanying chairs could be stashed in a corner somewhere out of sight when not in use. More villagers arrived and hovered around the doorway, looking bewildered.

"Out of my way!" Stoick's voice roared from somewhere outside the doors. He fought his way through the crowd. "Now, why's everyone- Odin's beard!" He stared blankly at the conspicuously furniture-less dining hall.

Finally, someone thought to look up, and there was a chorus of astonished gasps and exclamations.

"It's Hiccup's fault!" Snotlout proclaimed. Loki promptly chose him as his next victim.

Stoick gave him an extremely unimpressed look. "Oh, so you think Hiccup could have moved all those tables by himself? And put them on the ceiling? All without anyone noticing a thing?"

Snotlout fell into an embarrassed silence.

"Trolls did it!" Gobber announced to anyone who would listen. "None of us could have done it!"

"What do we do, Stoick?" one of the villagers asked, ignoring him.

"We sit on the floor," the chief said firmly.

Most people were half-way through their dinner or in the middle of debating something or other when the tables and chairs detached themselves from the ceiling and floated gently down to rest in their usual places. For the first time in living memory, the Berkians found something more interesting at a mealtime than the food or the arguments that so often broke out.

 

* * *

  
  
The moment Hiccup returned from that extremely eventful dinner, he glared at Loki and said, "Stop it."

"Stop what?" Loki said innocently.

"This... this thing you're doing! First it was Astrid - and that was horrible, by the way; I spent hours apologising to her on your behalf and she still won't speak to me - and now you decided to make us all have dinner on the floor? What's _wrong_ with you?"

"I am the God of Mischief," Loki pointed out. "It is in my nature to cause chaos."

"Yes, but this is just... stupid! And... and childish!"

...There was some truth in that. His pranks hadn't been up to the standard of his previous ones. Since Loki hated to let anyone think they'd got the upper hand, he promptly said dryly, "Let me guess. You want me to change my ways and become a fine, upstanding member of society."

Hiccup sighed. "If you have to cause trouble, why can't you do it in some other village?"

"Because-"

"HICCUP!" Stoick thundered from downstairs.

Both Hiccup and Loki jumped violently. Loki hurriedly shifted back to his dragon form, cursing himself for not hearing the human's return. Hiccup looked extremely nervous as his father climbed the stairs. Stoick did not look happy. How much had he heard? Would Hiccup forgive him (Loki, that is) if he wiped his memory, or would it be easier to explain everything?

"Why is there a pile of dead fish in front of the fire?" Stoick shouted at his son, so loudly that you'd have thought he was at one end of the house and Hiccup was at the other, instead of them standing mere feet apart. "And why are a herd of Terrible Terrors dragging it outside?"

What? He could hear the sound of a squabbling herd of Terrible Terrors. There was nothing unusual about that; the irritating creatures were everywhere, and it wouldn't be the first time he had to chase them out of the house. And now that he thought about it, Loki had to admit there _was_ a rather fishy smell about the house. He'd assumed it was just the smell of the fish they kept for his dinner. But in front of the fire? They never kept fish anywhere near the fireplace. Unless...

"I'm sorry, Dad, Toothless must have left it there," Hiccup was saying. He couldn't have made it more obvious he was lying if he tried.

"Hmph," Stoick grumbled. "Well, make sure he doesn't bring his food into the house again. Now I've got to get those Terrors out of the house."

As soon as he left Loki returned to his Æsir form and glared at Hiccup. "And you said _my_ pranks were stupid and childish."

Hiccup winced, but didn't attempt to deny it. "Well, you ruined our dinner; it was only fair."

"I did nothing to the food," Loki pointed out.

"No, but it's hard to eat when you have to watch out for flying tables!"

They stared at each other in silence. The God of Mischief was horrified to find himself wavering on the verge of giving in. He clenched his teeth. Who did the boy think he was, telling the Liesmith what to do?

"Very well then," Loki said, scarcely able to believe what he was saying. "I will only "cause trouble", as you put it, for other villages."

Hiccup breathed a sigh of relief. It was just as well he couldn't see what Loki was thinking, or he would have been considerably less relieved.

After all, convincing Snotlout he was a toad would hardly count as causing trouble.


End file.
